The ‘Refugee Crisis’ from Athens to Lesvos and Back:
The ‘Refugee Crisis’ from Athens to Lesvos and Back:

A Dialogical Account

Summary/Abstract: The slogan that prefaces the paper provides the theoretical caveat for the tensions,limitations, and contradictions of academic discourses in conjuring the daily reali-ties of the era of the ‘refugee crisis’ in Greece. This paper has the form of a dialoguebetween a sociologist and photographer (Myrto) and a political theorist and activist(Anna) who investigate different forms of the ways the ‘refugee crisis’ is changingthe socio-political landscapes in Greece. The multiple aspects of our identities pro-vide valuable tools with which we unpack the multiple and contradictory narrativesof researching, learning, and disseminating in the current milieu. In particular, weare interested in the ways we shape knowledge and the tension between the episte-mological and the ontological ways of knowing. In other words, by moving from theory to praxis and back, we are attempting to reconcile the problem of knowingand the problem of being part of a specific crisis milieu. For example, how can weuse crisis as a research methodology? What can we learn from the ongoing ‘refugeecrisis’ in relation to issues of citizenship, belonging, and the future of the Europeanproject? Furthermore, the paper attempts to transcend discursive borders betweensocial sciences and the humanities by analysing the deeply performative, situatedand embodied practices of doing research in moments of crisis. For example, howto navigate multiple, and at times contradictory, aspects of one’s identity withoutreturning to outmoded discourses of positivism and objectivity

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